Attention Gardeners:
We met this Saturday, January 23 at 10:00 in the garden. The greenhouse had some cleaning/sweeping and three flats of more wintery mesclun was planted. There was a Little Diggers' meeting at the Harris's about the upcoming program for this spring. If you are interested or would like to participate in planning Little Diggers events, please join in. Our AGM is February 21st, and we'll get the coffee and cookies happening for that. Exciting guest speaker!
We're thinking of perhaps moving the teepee to the left of the social shed, and Jim put seaweed on the garry-oak young trees in the park.
More notes taken from today's meeting are under the COMMENTS button below. Just click on it. M/J.
Dear Big Diggers,
ReplyDeleteSome ideas discussed today:
1. Today we talked about experimenting with both types of mesclun in the cool winter greenhouse. The warm types of lettuce don't survive well in close to freezing temperatures, but the "oriental" mesclun does really well. We seeded three flats using pro-mix, pre-moistened, and planted two lengthwise rows in each flat.
They were put back in the cool greenhouse to germinate as an experiment. These are marked "O.Mesclun" on their tags, for "oriental" and includes arugula, mustards, cress and other spicier mixed greens. We can seed 2-3 flats per week and mark them down for our records. When the weather gets warmer, we can switch to the mixed summer mesclun lettuce that is more delicate.
2. We moved the un-used sacks of leaves out of sight to beautify the compost area. They will be used in the future, but the plastic look is not so cute; so looks better now.
3. Our AGM is coming up on Feb. 21st with our great guest speaker! Come up with specific gardening questions for her. She's more into "chaos" or naturally diverse gardening, and is totally into very organic.(including Bio-dynamics which is an invention of Rudolf Steiner). We're going to ask about: Vertical growing, easy propogation, and other topics as we need to. So think up some good ones to ask about. ( Do you have questions that are....crop-specific? Microclimate specific? organic method specific? ---you decide.)
3. Seed catalogue that we were waiting for has arrived, and the folk who are ordering new seeds are meeting this week. Very exciting time! :>)
4. The AGM on Feb. 21st will also be a time to renew your DIGS membership, so 1 pm for that, and 1:30 for a quick AGM meeting, followed by our guest's talk. Can't wait!!
5. We cleared away the tomato stalks from the roof of the greenhouse. Hello mould, mildew and natural decay. Since they have seeds in them (the squished tomatoes) apparently they go in the general compost bins and not in the big leaf-seaweed bin. The big leaf-seaweed bin should not have seeds that may sprout. I didn't know that. Doh.
6. City main water is still shut off, but Jim is filling up the plastic can inside the greenhouse door when he's here. When he's away for three weeks (away starting Jan 31st) we'll want to continue seeding mesclun, and then get together to do spring seedlings in the greenhouse.
The more the merrier.
6. We learned more from Jim about not-reusing cell-packs for indoor seedlings that are prone to viruses that can be found on old cell-packs. Would like to know more.
7. Giant onion seedlings (all 200 of them) were transplanted into cell-packs (they don't catch viruses like more delicate plants) and went back to Jim's for growing under lights for a few more months. Ready for the contest? Look for a sunny spot.
Reporting from DIGS central. :>)
J.